The Assassins of Isis

by P. C. Doherty

  The robberies? Amerotke recalled Hatusu and Senenmut. He could understand their anger. But was there something else? He had detected fury, but also fear. Why? Public humiliation? Being brought into disrepute at a foreign court? Yet Hatusu seemed so personally involved, as if these robbers were blood enemies. Was this true? Or was he imagining it? Moreover, Senenmut had been extremely interested in the stolen goods recovered. They had also directed him to investigate the disappearance of the hesets at the Temple of Isis, yet instructed him not to offend the lord Impuki. Why? The High Priest could be suspected of so much.

  Amerotke paused in his writing. He was glad Lord Impuki could not see into his mind. He had no proof against the High Priest except a firm conviction that the Khetra, whoever he or she might be, was a powerful figure at the courts of Egypt. Of course, there was also the Lady Thena. Heset girls had gone missing from the temple, and Lady Thena was responsible for them. Amerotke remembered the High Priestess’ remarks about losing her own children, the cynicism in her voice. Did she truly believe in the Mother Goddess, or was she a Kemut, a holder of lies? Someone who disbelieved in the gods and their involvement in the affairs of men? Could she have killed Mafdet? Burnt his house to silence a garrulous captain of the guard who had seen or heard something he should not have?

  Amerotke dipped the quill back in the ink. True, they had all been together when Mafdet was killed; they were talking to Amerotke himself when the dead soldier’s house was burnt; whilst Paser had rescued him from the assassins. Nevertheless, if the Sebaus were guilty of Mafdet’s death, as well as arson and the attack on him, how could they have entered the temple so unobtrusively to wreak such devastation? In addition, what was true of Impuki could be said of many powerful figures in the Divine One’s court, men such as General Omendap or even Lord Valu. They too were holders of the imperial seal, men of great power who could wield considerable influence amongst the inhabitants of the city. Except … Amerotke stared at the wadjet painted on the far wall.

  ‘Except,’ he murmured, ‘everything comes back to the Temple of Isis.’

  General Suten had visited there. Impuki had sent him the poppy juice. The disappearance of the hesets, the murder of Mafdet, the arson and the attack on Amerotke. The judge closed his eyes. The only satisfaction he’d obtained was the business of Lady Nethba. He truly believed the architect Sese had died of natural causes. But why had his daughter raised the complaint in the first place?

  Amerotke moved to another problem: the Sebaus. Why were they still pursing him? He looked down at the pile of papers on the floor. He had been through it time and again, the confessions and the evidence against the grave-robbers. He could find nothing significant to make him a danger to these marauders. Which meant, he concluded, it was something he had overlooked. Why had they decided to attack him and not the lord Valu? Yes, that was it! Amerotke had collected the evidence. Valu had simply ordered the arrests and presented the case.

  Amerotke felt his eyes grow heavy, and, sitting back, he fell into a light sleep, only to be rudely awakened by Shufoy banging on the door. He started to his feet as Shufoy, breathless, came in, waving his hands.

  ‘What hour is it?’

  ‘Still not yet midnight.’ Shufoy leaned against the table. ‘That doesn’t matter! Captain Asural has sent a message from the House of Chains. The assassin we caught at the Temple of Isis has been found stabbed in his cell.’

  ‘What!’ Amerotke yelled, as he strode to the door, taking down his heavy striped robe from a peg on the wall.

  ‘You are not going now, master?’

  Amerotke heard the sound of Lady Norfret hastening down the passageway. He swung the robe around him and went out. Before his wife could speak, he grasped her hands, pulling her close. ‘I have to go!’ He kissed her gently on the forehead. ‘I have to see what has happened. You are well guarded here. I’ll take some of the Sacred Band with me.’

  He moved quickly before Norfret could protest, ordering Shufoy to bring his sandals. He looped a sword belt over his shoulder, took a dagger from the small armoury, slipped it through the sash on his waist and picked up a heavy club-stick.

  ‘There.’ He smiled at his wife. ‘Who would dare approach the God of War!’

  He collected six soldiers from the camp out in the garden and, with Shufoy ridiculously armed to the teeth scampering beside him, left his mansion, hurrying along the dark thoroughfare towards the postern door near the Gate of Ivory. He tried not to be aware of the sounds of the night, the slap slap of the river, the harsh cries from the papyrus groves or the dull roar of the hippopotami. He strove to ignore the stench of the rich mud, the blackness across the river broken by a few pricks of light from the Necropolis. The soldiers hurried along beside him. Amerotke vividly recalled his own military training, night marches through the desert where the standard-bearer had roared that they should concentrate on the next step and not be thinking of what surrounded them.

  They reached the city and were admitted through the postern gate. They hurried down deserted streets, across squares lit by cresset torches and huge bonfires as the city watch burnt the refuse collected during the day. The legion of beggars slunk away at the sound of their approach and the clatter of their weapons. No one accosted them. They reached the Temple of Ma’at breathless and sweat-soaked. Asural, waiting in a side courtyard, his guard all around him, led them into the temple, along a passageway and down the ill-lit stairs into the House of Chains. Guards milled about in the corridors. A cell door hung open to reveal the prisoner lying sprawled against the mildewed wall. In the light of the flickering torch he looked ghastly, clothed only in a loincloth, ankles and wrists heavily manacled. He had slumped to one side, eyes half open, mouth gaping. The cell itself was filthy, containing pots in which to wash, and for prisoners to relieve themselves, a battered stool and a mattress of straw in the corner. Amerotke pinched his nostrils and crouched down. The knife thrust into the man’s chest was embedded deep; a curious dagger, its blade long and very thin, its handle not much different, more a narrow shaft of bronze without any wood or leather grip. Amerotke pulled it free. A gasp of air escaped from the dead man’s lungs and a small trickle of blood followed the dagger out.

  ‘My lord?’ Asural handed him a dirty piece of cloth. The judge unrolled it and stared in disgust at the severed finger encrusted in blood. He glanced quickly at the prisoner’s hands; there was no wound.

  ‘It was found next to the corpse,’ Asural explained.

  ‘Where did the dagger come from?’ Amerotke got to his feet. ‘Asural, you were in charge.’

  The captain bowed his head, shuffled his feet and muttered something.

  Amerotke pushed him gently on the shoulder. ‘What was that? Speak up.’

  ‘He was chained and manacled,’ Asural explained. ‘He could move round his cell but no one ever visited him. I hold the keys; only I served him bread and water. There was a guard outside.’ He pointed at the half-open door.

  Amerotke went across and examined the narrow slat, high in the wood, which the guard could pull away to check on the prisoner.

  ‘Nobody came near this cell,’ Asural insisted. ‘There’s no window. He had no visitors. The guard outside reported nothing wrong.’

  ‘Bring him in,’ Amerotke ordered.

  After a great deal of shouting, Asural returned to the cell. The guard who followed him in was young and fresh-faced, dressed in a leather breastplate, kilt and high-tied sandals. Around his waist was a narrow belt with a wooden sheath for a dagger. He seemed as nervous as Asural and could only tell Amerotke that he’d stood on guard from the ninth hour. Now and again he had checked on the prisoner.

  ‘He kept to himself,’ the guard declared. ‘He wandered around the cell; I could hear the chains clink. Sometimes he drank from the water bowl, but mostly he just lay on his bed humming a song as if he hadn’t a care in the world. About an hour ago everything went silent. I thought he was asleep. I pulled back the slat and peered in. I was carrying a torc
h. The bed was empty. It was the way he was slumped against the wall which made me curious. I called the captain of the guard.’ The man shrugged. ‘The rest you know.’

  Amerotke stared down at the severed finger, thin and elegant, its smoothness marred by the blood-caked stump.

  ‘What, by all that is light, is happening?’ he whispered. ‘Here we have a man caged in a box with no weapons.’

  ‘He was stripped and searched,’ Asural agreed. ‘And so was his cell.’

  ‘No one is allowed in,’ Amerotke continued. ‘Except you, Asural.’ Again the captain of the guard agreed.

  ‘So how did he get the knife, and what on earth is a severed finger doing lying next to his corpse?’

  Amerotke crossed to the slat in the door through which the guard could peer. The gap was really a grille, far too narrow for anything to be slipped through. He shut the door, leaned against it and looked down at the prisoner’s chains. They would allow him movement to the privy jar and the bowl of water, but only so far. They’d stop him at least a yard from the door. Amerotke ignored the reeking stench and stared at the dirty whitewashed walls, the cobwebbed ceiling and hard paved floor.

  ‘There’s no way in,’ he murmured. He turned to the guard. ‘And you, who are you?’

  ‘Sir, I’ve worked here since the Season of the Peret, the year before last. My record is without stain, ask the captain.’

  ‘It is,’ the Captain growled. ‘He’s one of my best men, that’s why I gave him the post.’

  The guard seemed nervous but sincere. Amerotke thrust the piece of rag back into Asural’s hands and summarily left the cell, returning to the courtyard. The night breeze had grown strong, the torchlight garish against the blackness, the sounds of the city muted. Amerotke rubbed his arms and stared up at the stars, cold darts of light against the night sky. He was on the verge of panic at the unnamed terrors which threatened. Like a soldier in the battle line who knows the enemy is advancing fast and in force but can do little to prevent it. Who were these Sebaus who could enter a closely guarded temple and, somehow, slip through stone and wood to silence an imprisoned comrade? That severed finger, what did it mean?

  Amerotke walked across to one of the braziers to warm his hands. The root cause of this threat was the tomb robberies. They had begun about a year ago, a trickle at first, but more and more as the looters became more audacious. Surely the Sebaus must have existed before that? How were they organised so quickly?

  Shufoy ran up to question him. Amerotke snapped back, then apologised.

  ‘Come.’ He picked up the club-stick from where he had left it. ‘We must go home, there’s nothing more we can do here.’

  Surrounded by their guard, they left the temple and returned safely home. Amerotke checked all was secure and went up to his bedchamber. Norfret was asleep, or pretending to be. Amerotke slipped off his robe, eased himself into the bed and lay staring into the darkness.

  The next morning he woke early, pretending nothing was wrong. He helped Norfret and the boys pack a few belongings and toys and took them down to the Great Mooring Place, the principal quayside of the city. It was still very early, so the warehouses on the wharf had not yet opened, and the workers sat grouped around fires, sharing their food and chattering. The fishing folk had brought their night catch in and were now busy gutting it, soaking it in vats of brine before it was loaded into baskets and taken into the city markets. A group of marines was already there, waiting to receive Norfret. A short while later an imperial barge, the Pride of Anubis, nosed in along the quayside with its high gold-coloured brow carved in the shape of a snarling jackal’s head. In the stern stood the pilot and captain; its great purple and silver sail had been furled, the rowers raising their oars so it seemed as if there was a host of spearmen on board. Lady Norfret moved to the steps, then came back and pressed her fingers against Amerotke’s lips. ‘Please don’t lie,’ she murmured and kissed him gently. ‘This is very, very dangerous. You must take care. Come to me soon.’

  Amerotke embraced his wife and kissed the boys goodbye and watched them go aboard, as they were escorted to the elaborately carved, exquisitely painted cabin in the centre. He gave a sigh of relief: the barge had a full complement of marines, with an escort of smaller barges full of Syrian bowmen. The ram’s head standard of Amun-Ra was lifted. Orders rang out, the barge pushed off, oars were lowered gently, steering the craft through the sandbanks covered in the green leaves of the melons which grew there and out into midstream. Amerotke watched them go. For a while he studied the crowd thronging the quayside. He wondered how many of them, people from so many kingdoms, were studying him. The officer of the escort coughed tactfully behind him. Amerotke raised his hand and, spinning on his heel, was about to leave the quayside when he abruptly stopped. He had been so immersed in his own fears and anxieties over the departure of his family that he hadn’t realised: Shufoy was missing.

  Shufoy, garbed in a striped robe, its hood pulled up, one hand resting on the hilt of the dagger pushed into his belt, the other grasping his parasol as if it was a war club, had crept from the house whilst Amerotke had been busy with his family. No one had seen him steal through the gardens and scale the wall, nimble as a monkey, before scampering down the trackway. Shufoy ran, fleeing like a little shadow before the sun. He dodged carts, donkeys, the crowds going for the day’s trading, in through the Lion Gate and on to the main thoroughfare of Thebes. He hastened along the spacious avenue lined with date, palm and sycamore trees. Every thirty paces there rose a huge carving of a crouched lion, so lifelike with their bodies of gleaming sandstone, black stone for their ruffled manes and precious red rocks for their eyes.

  The avenue was busy as peasants and merchants wheeling barrows, guiding oxen, carts or a line of pack animals, went up to do business in the various markets scattered around each quarter of the city: lithe, dark-skinned men from Punt, the Land of Incense, with their bundles of fragrant sandalwood and other perfumed grains and powders; Nubians bringing gold, silver, ivory and malachite as well as exotic animals such as baby giraffes, brilliantly plumaged birds and cages of trained monkeys. A platoon of Kushite mercenaries on their early-morning watch went by, the soaring painted ostrich plumes in their headdresses nodding in the breeze. They looked magnificent in their leopardskin kilts, their hard bare feet slapping the ground as they marched in rhythm behind their panther standard. Shufoy stared enviously at their oval shields and wicked-looking spears. One day, he promised himself, he would buy one of those to place on the wall of his own chamber, perhaps embroider some story about how he’d obtained it in battle.

  Shufoy stared up at the branches of a sycamore tree. He wanted to do well, to please his master and impress him with his wisdom. Last night the judge had snapped at him, a rare occurrence, and watching Norfret and the boys prepare to leave, Shufoy had realised that his master confronted terrible danger. He had lain awake half the night wondering what he could do before reaching his decision. It might be dangerous, but at least it might help.

  The dwarf continued on his way, only standing aside as a unit of imperial chariotry, gleaming carriages of electrum and gold, horses sleek and fat, rattled by. He moved from one stone lion to another. Every so often he would stop in the shade and peer round to see if he was being followed. He could detect no danger, and halfway down the imperial avenue he abruptly darted down a side lane which turned and twisted into the poorer section of the city. Shufoy crossed rutted tracks, shabby squares, past the mud-caked houses of the peasants and artisans with their outside fires. Swarms of beggar children with red-rimmed eyes, sore mouths and stick-like arms hurried up to beg for alms. Vermin dogs, yellow-skinned mongrels with snub mastiff faces, lunged at the end of ropes; they were deliberately kept hungry so that they would be forced to eat the human refuse strewn about. Petty marketeers touted for his trade. Shufoy cursed them, trying not to gag at the smells from the midden heaps, the refuse tips, the oil-caked ovens of the poor where they burnt their meat and baked their dry b
read. Everywhere hung the pervasive smell of the special vinegar, drawn from home-brewed beer, which the peasants used to sprinkle their houses to ward off flies and rodents.

  Shufoy forced his way through flocks of sheep, geese, goats and asses, using his parasol to knock aside the pedlars with their trays offering a range of goods, cheap jewellery and salted meat. Eventually the needle-thin alleyways gave way to broad paths and he reached the House of Deliciousness, one of the most exotic brothel houses in Thebes. The Restu, the Watchers, let him through a gate into the courtyard. He introduced himself and was immediately ushered into the presence of the Queen of Pleasure, the heavy-wigged, obese, perfume-drenched owner of Thebes’ most notorious establishment. The Queen of Pleasure was sitting on a dais in her pink-painted eating hall surrounded by cushions, feasting from a tray of seafood delicacies. She raised her face and fluttered beringed fingers.